


Everybody must excuse us (if we walk on air)

by Aja



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur has Gershwin songs in his heart, Love Confessions, M/M, Relationship Discussions, Schmoop, everyone says i love you, or at least the author did while writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 13:19:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4788683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ve been waiting for you since the day I met you. No, none of that, Arthur. You didn’t break my heart. I wasn’t harboring some great unrequited thing for you. It was more like... More like a low-level hum in the back of my brain.  Just a buzz there all along, pointing me towards you. It’s always been this, Arthur. I don’t want anything else but this. Just you, any way I can have you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody must excuse us (if we walk on air)

He’s being subtle about it, but Andrev, the rising star extractor who’d particularly recruited Arthur for this job in Kiev, won’t stop flirting with him.

It’s frustrating for Arthur in a way that has nothing to do with the fact that Andrev is young and brilliant, with a long, lightly muscled body and a penchant for patterned fabrics that would once have had Arthur itching to unwrap them to see what lay beneath.

A few days into the job, he waits til the other team members are out, passes Andrev the latest research on the mark, and says, “Oh, and I wanted to mention. I just want you to know that I’m extremely flattered by the attention, but I’m involved with someone.”

Andrev blinks, like Arthur’s given him data that hadn’t shown in his research. Something inside Arthur tightens uncomfortably.  “Oh, sorry, man,” Andrev says, not hiding his surprise. “Huh.”

“Is that strange?” Arthur can’t help but ask.

“Just—it’s not with anyone in dreamshare, right?” Andrev asks. “I can’t see you getting serious with someone on the outside, is all.”

Arthur hesitates. “An old friend,” he finally manages to answer, and goes back to his desk before he can show how rattled he is.

The job goes off smoothly after that, and at the end he shakes Andrev’s hand, says he’ll work with him again, and heads straight for the airport.

 

 

 

Eames has been squandering his savings from the Fischer job by living out of a suite in the Hotel Cerny Slon, from which he has texted Arthur daily views of the slags and tourists wandering through the square. Arthur suspects he’s been living rather like a slag himself, but when he wheedles a room key out of the desk clerk and slips inside the suite, he’s surprised at how unkempt it isn’t. Eames is sprawling on the bed squinting vainly at a Czech variety show. His socks are toed off, one on the duvet and one on the floor, and there’s a mostly empty pizza box on the coffee table. A PASIV sits in the corner, neatly put away and inconspicuous, but the standing mirror next to it has been angled away from the window to give Eames the most room to practice acting and impersonation, the elements of forging he does when awake. The room is spacious, done in creams and dark wood, and it feels surprisingly homey. Arthur doesn’t wait to slip into bed alongside Eames, who lifts the covers for him magnanimously.

“An Arthur! Hello,” he says delightedly, tucking an arm around said Arthur, who sort of flops against him. The flight was short, and he’s not tired, exactly, but he does feel a sense of bone-weary exhaustion that he thinks has nothing to do with the long hours spent on the job. He tilts his head up and tugs Eames down for a kiss. He means it to be a soft form of hello, but Eames curls his tongue beneath his own and moans sin and velvet into Arthur’s mouth, a guttural sound that has him hard in an instant. He shifts and pulls Eames down against him, and lets Eames paw at him a little, smirking as he gets his trousers and boxers off and shoves his hand into Eames’ pants. Eames’ cock in his palm is the thick, solid weight he’s been missing for days, weeks if he’s being honest; he curls his hand around it and strokes slowly, keeping his mouth on Eames’ while they touch. Eames’ hand is a little rough, and Arthur wonders if he’s been as out of practice as Arthur has since the last time they fucked. They’ve long since ceased caring about being graceful when they do this together: it’s ungainly, but comfortable, and so fucking good Arthur’s eyes are fluttering shut without his consent.

“Wanna eat you alive,” Eames murmurs, breaking the kiss to lay more kisses against Arthur’s neck, licking a line up the long column of his throat and biting just beneath his jaw. Arthur comes clutching Eames’ bicep with one hand and sliding his thumb over Eames’ foreskin with the other. He hisses softly; it’s always like this, just exactly this floaty and sharp and good.

When he’s brought Eames off (by pinning him bodily to the mattress and getting him off one-handed while he licks and sucks Eames’ nipples) Arthur sprawls out, half-draping himself over Eames’ chest. He’s still wearing his shirt and his waistcoast, which he knows turns Eames on more than he’ll ever admit, but Eames, naked, looks like a fucking Renaissance carving, spread out beneath him and boneless, braided muscles glistening with a light sheen of sweat. Arthur can’t stop touching him, can’t stop skating his hand along the plane of Eames’ abdomen, curling his fingers into Eames’ wiry thatch of hair, dipping lower to cup his balls like they didn’t just have sex, like he shouldn’t feel spent and strung out instead of ready to make Eames come all over again.

Eames hums, tired but making no effort to stop him. He never does, Arthur thinks, riding a wave of oxytocin-induced affection. Possibly the way Eames hadn’t even batted an eye at Arthur walking in without any notice is a contributing factor. Like he’s got a spot in his bed open whenever Arthur wants, and—fuck. Honestly, Arthur knows he does. Arthur knows better, by now. Arthur’s spent the whole flight over from Kiev thinking about it: about the things he knows about him and Eames.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this delightful visit?” Eames asks. Arthur knows he’s not oblivious to whatever overthinking is happening inside Arthur’s head, but Arthur also knows Eames has long since learned to ignore the signs that Arthur may be having a slight mental breakdown about whatever this thing is they have going on. And that’s always been for the best, because usually he waits til Arthur is calm again, or distracts him (frequently with teeth and tongue and god, _lips_ ), and everything is fine.

Arthur thinks about lying, making up a job as an excuse, but it’s not really worth it, not at this late stage of their whatever. “I wanted to get laid,” he says.

“You came all this way for my cock, Arthur, honestly, I’m flattered,” Eames says, but Arthur glances up and sees his cheeks tinging pink. Really, if he’d known what he was getting himself into when they first started sleeping together, he’d have never dared let it start. If he’d known that Eames blushes when he’s embarrassed and is all but helpless when tickled around the knees, that he unfailingly always smells like tropical Old Spice even when Arthur has ruthlessly thrown out every drop of the stuff and replaced it with something less coconut-y and suitably woodsy, that Eames gets strangely giggly and happy whenever he eats shellfish, that he likes fucking most just after Arthur’s woken up in the morning, when he’s still sleep-rumpled and mostly too comfy to bother grumbling much when Eames scoops him up and slips inside Arthur’s body like it’s a ritual, Eames wrapped around him, pressing against him everywhere, Arthur’s gasps and sighs and stuttered moans swallowed up every time by Eames’ arms holding him close, pinning him against the bed, his cock filling Arthur, his thighs covering Arthur’s, his body _knowing_ Arthur’s, turning him slowly inside out.

If he’d known that Eames wears layers of casual indifference like some men wear body armor, so well-perfected that sometimes Arthur still slips up and mistakes what they have for something haphazard and accidental, something that could end at any time. Except it hasn’t. Not in all the years of flirting and fighting and fucking and returning to do it all again.

Eames is watching him, now, waiting; Arthur’s hand has stilled and rests gently on Eames’ hip. His head is still cradled against Eames’ chest.

“I need to tell you something,” he says without looking at Eames directly. From his position lying against Eames he can feel rather than see the stages of Eames’ reaction: the sudden clenching of the muscles in his abdomen as he assumes the worst and tenses accordingly; the forcible relaxing as he reminds himself that this is Arthur, and Arthur wouldn’t hurt him needlessly, not like this, not while they’re in bed together; the deep pull of breath expanding his lungs as he prepares himself for whatever it is Arthur has to say.

And Arthur sits up and looks at him, finally, lets himself hold Eames’ gaze, lets himself be serious about this, for once. He’s thought about this. He knows what he needs to say. He shouldn’t be afraid, but it still feels exactly like he’s inches away from plummeting off the edge of a farflung cliff.  From the tightness around Eames’ mouth and eyes, he’s feeling the same way, too. Arthur wants to tell him there’s no need to worry, but with Eames, there’s always the chance that he’s missed a step somewhere, that this might be the long overdue panic spiral Eames has never had about their relationship.

“I think...” Arthur tries. Then he shakes his head. He knows what this is.

“I want you to know that I haven’t slept with anyone else in a long time,” he says. “I don’t want anyone else but you.”

He says it quiet, so the words hang between them like a secret for a moment. Eames’ eyes widen but he doesn’t react, other than to keep looking at Arthur, waiting for more.

“I know we’ve never set anything in stone, I’ve never wanted you to—I still don’t want you to, not if it’s not what you want. I just... this last job, the extractor kept hitting on me, and I kept wondering why I would even bother, when I had—” he has to swallow, take in air—”when I already had the best offer waiting for me here.”

Eames draws in a breath at that. Arthur keeps talking because Eames doesn’t seem close to interrupting him, and that could be good, or bad, he honestly has no idea.

“We’ve always done casual,” Arthur says, “and that’s fine. I’ve never wanted you to feel anything more for me than you do, it’s just—if you want—if it’s something you’ve thought about—I was wondering if we could... I mean, I think, I want us to—to be together.”

Eames is still staring. Arthur glances down, runs his hand up Eames’ side and lightly touches his wrist. He waits.

“It’s just,” says Eames after another moment, in a voice Arthur’s never heard him use, “I’m still stuck on the part at the beginning.”

Arthur grins. “The part where I said I only want you.”

Eames blinks. “That part.”

Arthur’s grin gets bigger. “You’re the only one I want,” he says, and it feels surprisingly good to say it, like a key finally fitting into a lock, turning inside of him. This is who he is: he’s Arthur, the best point man in dreamshare, and he’s with Eames. This is who _they_ are.

He leans in and kisses Eames. It’s delicate and slow and after a moment Eames cups Arthur’s chin and tangles his fingers in Arthur’s hair, and opens his mouth to Arthur, and Arthur thinks that this is an echo of their first kiss all over again—sweet and a little shell-shocked.

“I don’t know what it means yet,” he says when their lips part, “but I just wanted you to know.”

“Arthur,” Eames murmurs, and he still sounds like he can’t believe it. Arthur strokes the back of Eames’ neck, wanting him closer. “Yes.”

“Yes to what?”

“Yes,” Eames says again, sounding slightly hysterical. “Yes to all of it. To, to whatever you want. Whatever that might be. If you want us to spend more time together, then the answer’s yes. If you want there to be commitment and, I don’t know, mutual planning, then yes. _Yes_.”

“Do you want,” Arthur says, ducking in to kiss him again because he suddenly feels giddy with possibility, “Do you want to work more jobs together? Spend more time together outside of work? Both? Neither? I don’t—I want whatever you want.”

Eames laughs. “That won’t do, I want whatever _you_ want.”

“I want more jobs with you,” Arthur says, almost whispers, against Eames’ temple. “And I want more downtime with you. I want all of it. We’re so much better together than apart.” It feels like a confession.

“Is that so,” Eames says, his breath leaving him in a shudder. He draws Arthur down to him.

“I should have told you sooner,” Arthur murmurs. “I always want you with me.” Every spoken utterance leaves Arthur feeling lighter, as though his secrets have been weighing him down for years.

“It could be risky,” Eames says after he’s let Arthur up for air, “to be that open.”

“We haven’t exactly been hiding it, have we?”

“No, but it’s all been too intermittent for anyone to notice, hasn’t it?”

“I think it’ll be okay,” Arthur says. “We already know more than a few people who know what we are to each other. “

“And what is that?” Eames says, a tease against his lips.

Arthur means to tease him back, but Eames’ face is raw with something that looks like wonder, and their foreheads are touching, and Arthur wonders if this is how all their decision-making will be from here on in, intimacy and touching each other like they can’t get enough—and what comes out instead is just the truth.

“...Beloved,” he says.

Eames draws in a breath and pulls back. They stare at each other.

And Arthur suddenly understands that that’s it: that’s what this has always been. “I love you,” he says, realizing it even as the words leave his mouth, that this is love, that Eames is the love of his goddamned life. “I’m _in love_ with you.”

And Eames says: “Fuck me,” apparently so surprised he suddenly slips into rare South London mode.  “I’ll have to stop gambling, innit? I’ll never get this lucky again.”

Fuck, Arthur thinks, unable to stifle a snicker that turns into a stream of laughter. I love him. I _love_ him.

“You—you don’t have to say it, or if it’s too much, I get it, it’s fine, I just—”

“Shh.” Eames puts a hand on his arm to steady him and faces him, grey eyes going dark and serious. “I’ve been waiting for you since the day I met you. No, none of that, Arthur. You didn’t break my heart. I wasn’t harboring some great unrequited thing for you. It was more like...” He grins and looks away, flushing. It’s one of the toothy grins he flashes sometimes, rare unguarded smiles that Arthur prizes and keeps close. They mean Eames is happy—too happy to help himself.  “More like a low-level hum in the back of my brain.  Just a buzz there all along, pointing me towards you. It’s always been this, Arthur. I don’t want anything else but this. Just you, any way I can have you.”

And Arthur says, “Oh,” a little breathlessly, thinking of all the needling and flirting and rivalry and moments of absolute synchronicity that have thrummed through the two of them over the years. “I—I’m going to be an asshole, probably,” he says, feeling overwhelmed and a little helpless, unable to stop touching Eames.  “But I won’t mean it, whatever it is.”

“Arthur,” Eames says, laughing at him openly now, “I’ve seen you jacked up on Somnacin in Berlin and vomiting and passed out over tequila that time in Guadalajara.” Arthur scowls, but Eames’ smile turns serious, and he leans close, tracing the shadow of Arthur’s dimple with his thumb. “I’ve seen you in mourning,” he continues. “I’ve seen you fucked over by the army, I’ve seen you completely wrecked from dealing with Cobb. I’ve seen you overworked and exhausted and stressed and streaked with blood and angry enough to kill everyone in a five-block radius and privately freaking out because you had to use a gun in real life and panicky because you couldn’t find a no-kill shelter to take that stray kitten you found in Damascus. I _know_ you, Arthur. There are times I think I know you better than anyone. I don’t really think there’s anything you could be that I wouldn’t—that I wouldn’t want to be close to.”

“Oh, says Arthur again. “Yeah. Me too. I mean—yeah.” He huffs out a laugh and Eames swoops and kisses the flash of dimple where his fingertips were just hovering.

“So we tell people,” says Eames a few heady moments later. Somehow he’s maneuvered Arthur onto his back, and he’s finally getting around to popping the buttons on Arthur’s waistcoat. “That extractor, Andrev? Can we tell him first?”

Arthur laughs. “No,” he says sternly. “He’s too young for me anyway.”

“Do people really not know we’re a thing?” Eames muses. “I’d’ve thought surely after that stretch in Mumbai...”

“Really? I spent most of that six weeks bribing various officials to get you out of jail,” Arthur reminds him. “If anyone got any ideas from Mumbai, it was probably that you were lucky I didn’t shoot you myself.”

“Ah, but when I turned up alive thereafter surely anyone paying attention would have known it could only be true love.”

“And yet, shockingly, no one else in this business appears to care,” Arthur says. He arches his neck and lets Eames settle over him, kissing his way over Arthur’s throat.

“They’ll care when they realize we’re a package deal,” Eames murmurs. “They won’t know what’s happened to them.”

Arthur hums. “I know just how they feel,” he says—but it’s not quite true, he thinks. He can remember exactly how he got here, the long lust-ridden road from sparks flying to enmity, turning gradually into mutual respect, and later, to friendship, to the moment when finally Arthur couldn’t help himself anymore, couldn’t deny that he’d spent months, maybe years, wanting and waiting for Eames to make the first move. That first move, that first halting kiss and overeager fumble—it all feels so long ago now. He knows Eames’ body now, the planes of their hips slotting together, the weight of Eames’ broad chest against his, the warmth of Eames at his back when they fall asleep, his arm inevitably finding its way around Arthur’s waist in the night, as if he’s afraid, even in sleep, to let him wander too far away.

“Besides,” Eames says, “Once we run a job or two, word will spread like wildfire that you’re off the market. No pesky upstart extractors to distract you.”

“You mean you’ll be distracting me instead,” Arthur responds.

“Precisely.”

“Eames, how is that different from any other job before now?”

“Because this time you’ll be hitting on me back!” Eames says triumphantly.

“I will not,” Arthur says, with as much dignity as he can muster given that Eames is currently attempting to nose Arthur’s shirt off over his collarbone. “The idea is to keep _everyone_ from hitting on me on jobs, not trade up hot young things for you instead.”

“Too late for that,” Eames says, and Arthur can hear the smirk in his voice as he finally tugs off the remnants of Arthur’s clothes and pushes them to the floor. “You’re stuck with me and the terrible hardship of having a devilishly handsome man feeling you up on the regular.”

“Well, when you put it like that, how could I ever have resisted?” Arthur says, fast forwarding to the rest of his life, to an endless string of jobs spent working jobs like the one in Majorca, when he’d hauled Eames into the backroom nearly every day, desperate to get his mouth around Eames’ cock. He likes to think he’s gotten control of his libido since then, but that’s a dirty lie and they both know it. All he’s really done is measure the jobs he works with Eames, space them out like undeserved treats. They’re still shameless when they’re together. In retrospect, he has no idea how they haven’t given themselves away. He can’t really wrap his brain around what life will be like if they’re together more often. The sheer prospect of having Eames at his side, having his plush mouth and his big hands and sharp, canny awareness of all Arthur’s moods and foibles, there with him day in and day out, is exhilarating and terrifying.

“Oh, god,” he says faintly. “Everyone’s going to know.”

“We can take it slow at first, if you like,” Eames says, resting his chin on Arthur’s breastbone. Arthur tilts his head and eyes him, but Eames’ eyes are soft and earnest. “No overthinking. I don’t want anything to change us. To change this. I want us to be us, for as long as we can be. If that means we take time away from each other like always, fine. We don’t have to change everything at once.”

“No,” Arthur says. “I want more time with you. I want us to be together. We’ll figure out the rest.”

And Eames says: “Darling. I look forward to every minute,” and bears Arthur down into the pillows, murmuring love and contentment against his lips. 

Outside, a few stories below, tourists trickle onto the streets of Prague, cheeks flushed with the thrill of adventure and the promise of a city waiting to be explored.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Gershwin's "For You, For Me, Forevermore," because I am a humongous sap. <3
> 
> In the 5 years I’ve been obsessed with this pairing I have dreamed up roughly 10,000 versions of this exact scene, and I can’t say why exactly I had the urge to write this one down. I can say, though, that as always I owe a bunch to other fics that have done parts or all of this scene much better than I, like Ciircee’s "[There can be rings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/421354/). There can be telling people,” and Weatherfront’s “[try to miss with the toaster](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364921),” and Helen’s “[I’ve loved you](http://archiveofourown.org/works/209260) from the first moment I got my hands on you,” and Tabi's "[I think I've known you](http://archiveofourown.org/works/360527) for all of the years," and Katie’s [last in a series](http://archiveofourown.org/works/250223), and basically everything that comes from me in this fandom has always come first from dozens of other people, and I thank you and love you all.


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